Adlai E. Stevenson:
What do I believe? As an American I believe in generosity, in liberty, in the rights of man. These are social and political faiths that are part of me, as they are, I suppose, part of all of us. Such beliefs are easy to express. But part of me too is my relation to all life, my religion. And this is not so easy to talk about. Religious experience is highly intimate and, for me, ready words are not at hand.
speech, Libertyville, Illinois, May 21, 1954
Alfred Korzybski:
There are two ways to slide easily through life: to believe everything or to doubt everything; both ways save us from thinking.
Anatole France:
To accomplish great things, we must not only act, but also dream; not only plan, but also believe.
Andre Gide:
Believe those who are seeking the truth; doubt those who find it.
Anne Frank:
In spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart. I simply can't build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery and death.
Bertrand Russell:
What a man believes upon grossly insufficient evidence is an index into his desires -- desires of which he himself is often unconscious. If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance to his instincts, he will accept it even on the slightest evidence. The origin of myths is explained in this way.
Buddha:
Believe nothing just because a so-called wise person said it. Believe nothing just because a belief is generally held. Believe nothing just because it is said in ancient books. Believe nothing just because it is said to be of divine origin. Believe nothing just because someone else believes it. Believe only what you yourself test and judge to be true. [paraphrased]
Charlotte Perkins Gilman:
Habits of thought persist through the centuries; and while a healthy brain may reject the doctrine it no longer believes, it will continue to feel the same sentiments formerly associated with that doctrine.
Demosthenes:
Nothing is easier than self-deceit. For what each man wishes, that he also believes to be true.
Edith Hamilton:
Faith is not belief. Belief is passive. Faith is active.
Frank Lloyd Wright:
The thing always happens that you really believe in; and the belief in a thing makes it happen.
G. K. Chesterton:
It is not bigotry to be certain we are right; but it is bigotry to be unable to imagine how we might possibly have gone wrong.
George Orwell:
Myths which are believed in tend to become true.
Hannah Senesh:
One needs something to believe in, something for which one can have whole-hearted enthusiasm. One needs to feel that one's life has meaning, that one is needed in this world.
Harry Emerson Fosdick:
Nothing else matters much -- not wealth, nor learning, nor even health -- without this gift: the spiritual capacity to keep zest in living. This is the creed of creeds, the final deposit and distillation of all important faiths: that you should be able to believe in life.
Isaiah Berlin:
Only barbarians are not curious about where they come from, how they came to be where they are, where they appear to be going, whether they wish to go there, and if so, why, and if not, why not.
Johann Goethe:
If you must tell me your opinions, tell me what you believe in. I have plenty of douts of my own.
Mark Twain:
In religion and politics people's beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing.
Autobiography, 1959
Michael Korda:
To succeed, we must first believe that we can.
Pearl S. Buck:
I feel no need for any other faith than my faith in the kindness of human beings. I am so absorbed in the wonder of earth and the life upon it that I cannot think of heaven and angels.
Pearl S. Buck:
When men destroy their old gods they will find new ones to take their place.
Philip K. Dick:
Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.
Ralph Waldo Emerson:
Belief consists in accepting the affirmations of the soul; Unbelief, in denying them.
Ralph Waldo Emerson:
A person will worship something, have no doubt about that. We may think our tribute is paid in secret in the dark recesses of our hearts, but it will out. That which dominates our imaginations and our thoughts will determine our lives, and our character. Therefore, it behooves us to be careful what we worship, for what we are worshipping we are becoming.
Robert Fulghum:
I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge -- myth is more potent than history -- dreams are more powerful than facts -- hope always triumphs over experience -- laughter is the cure for grief -- love is stronger than death.
Rudyard Kipling:
I always try to believe the best of everybody -- it saves so much trouble.
Sophia Lyon Fahs:
Some beliefs are like walled gardens. They encourage
exclusiveness, and the feeling of being especially privileged.
Other beliefs are expansive and lead the way into wider and
deeper sympathies.
This entry continued ...
Sydney J. Harris:
An idealist believes the short run doesn't count. A cynic believes the long run doesn't matter. A realist believes that what is done or left undone in the short run determines the long run.
Thomas Jefferson:
The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus by the Supreme Being in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter.
Thomas Jefferson:
Ignorance is preferable to error, and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing than he who believes what is wrong.
Thomas Wentworth Higginson:
All ... religions show the same disparity between belief and practice, and each is safe till it tries to exclude the rest. Test each sect by its best or its worst as you will, by its high-water mark of virtue or its low-water mark of vice. But falsehood begins when you measure the ebb of any other religion against the flood-tide of your own. There is a noble and a base side to every history.
Voltaire:
As long as people believe in absurdities, they will continue to commit atrocities.
William Robertson Smith:
Belief in a certain series of myths was neither obligatory as a part of the true religion, nor was it supposed that, by believing, a man acquired religious merit and conciliated the favour of the gods.
Alex Haley:
In every conceivable manner, the family is link to our past, bridge to our future.
Ariel and Will Durant:
The family is the nucleus of civilization.
Auguste Napier:
In each family a story is playing itself out, and each family's story embodies its hope and despair.
Ben Silliman:
American families have always shown remarkable resiliency, or flexible adjustment to natural, economic, and social challenges. Their strengths resemble the elasticity of a spider web, a gull's skillful flow with the wind, the regenerating power of perennial grasses, the cooperation of an ant colony, and the persistence of a stream carving canyon rocks. These are not the strengths of fixed monuments but living organisms. This resilience is not measured by wealth, muscle or efficiency but by creativity, unity, and hope. Cultivating these family strengths is critical to a thriving human community.
Family Life Specialist with the University of Wyoming's Cooperative Extension Service
Bertrand Russell:
The place of the father in the modern suburban family is a very small one, particularly if he plays golf.
Carl Sandburg:
A baby is God's opinion that the world should go on.
Chinese Proverb:
Govern a family as you would cook a small fish - very gently.
- sometimes attributed to Confucius
Colette:
It is not a bad thing that children should occasionally, and politely, put parents in their place.
Confucius:
To put the world right in order, we must first put the nation in order; to put the nation in order, we must first put the family in order; to put the family in order, we must first cultivate our personal life; we must first set our hearts right.
Eda LeShan:
Becoming responsible adults is no longer a matter of whether children hang up there pajamas or put dirty towels in the hamper, but whether they care about themselves and others -- and whether they see everyday chores as related to how we treat this planet.
Elizabeth II:
Like all the best families, we have our share of eccentricities, of impetuous and wayward youngsters and of family disagreements.
Elizabeth Stone:
Making the decision to have a child - it's momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking outside your body.
Erma Bombeck:
You hear a lot of dialogue on the death of the American family. Families aren't dying. They're merging into big conglomerates.
Evelyn Waugh:
Don't hold your parents up to contempt. After all, you are their son, and it is just possible that you may take after them.
Francis Bacon:
He that hath a wife and children hath given hostages to fortune.
Francis Bacon:
Important families are like potatoes. The best parts are underground.
George Bernard Shaw:
If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance.
George Bernard Shaw:
Perhaps the greatest social service that can be rendered by anybody to this country and to mankind is to bring up a family.
George Burns:
Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city.
George Santayana:
The family is one of nature's masterpieces.
Harry S Truman:
I have found the best way to give advice to your children is to find out what they want and then advise them to do it.
Helen Keller:
A man can't make a place for himself in the sun if he keeps taking refuge under the family tree.
Isaac Rosenfeld:
In every dispute between parent and child, both cannot be right, but they may be, and usually are, both wrong. It is this situation which gives family life its peculiar hysterical charm.
Jane Howard:
Call it a clan, call it a network, call it a tribe, call it a family:
Whatever you call it, whoever you are, you need one.
Jessamyn West:
Writing is a solitary occupation. Family, friends, and society are the natural enemies of the writer. He must be alone, uninterrupted, and slightly savage if he is to sustain and complete an undertaking.
John Donne:
As states subsist in part by keeping their weaknesses from being known, so is it the quiet of families to have their chancery and their parliament within doors, and to compose and determine all emergent differences there.
John P. Kretzmann and John L. McKnight:
Every single person has capabilities, abilities and gifts. Living a good life depends on whether those capabilities can be used, abilities expressed and gifts given. If they are, the person will be valued, feel powerful and well-connected to the people around them. And the community around the person will be more powerful because of the contribution the person is making.
This entry continued ...
Leo Tolstoy:
Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. - opening line from Anna Karenina
Leo Tolstoy:
All happy families resemble one another, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
Margaret Mead:
No matter how many communes anybody invents, the family always creeps back.
Margaret Mead:
Nobody has ever before asked the nuclear family to live all by itself in a box the way we do. With no relatives, no support, we've put it in an impossible situation.
Marian Wright Edelman:
If you as parents cut corners, your children will too. If you lie, they will too. If you spend all your money on yourselves and tithe no portion of it for charities, colleges, churches, synagogues, and civic causes, your children won't either. And if parents snicker at racial and gender jokes, another generation will pass on the poison adults still have not had the courage to snuff out.
Marilyn French:
To nourish children and raise them against odds is in any time, any place, more valuable than to fix bolts in cars or design nuclear weapons.
Marilyn French:
To nourish children and raise them against odds is in any time, any place, more valuable than to fix bolts in cars or design nuclear weapons.
Michael Levine:
Having children makes you no more a parent than having a piano makes you a pianist.
Pearl S. Buck:
I love people. I love my family, my children . . . but inside myself is a place where I live all alone and that's where you renew your springs that never dry up.
Sarah J. Hale:
Nor need we power or splendor, wide hall or lordly dome;
The good, the true, the tender -- these form the wealth of home.
Shakespeare:
The voice of parents is the voice of gods, for to their children they are heaven's lieutenants.
Sidonie Gruenberg:
Home is the place where boys and girls first learn how to limit their wishes, abide by rules, and consider the rights and needs of others.
Theodore Hesburgh:
The most important thing a father can do for his children is to love their mother.
Thomas Jefferson:
The happiest moments of my life have been the few which I have passed at home in the bosom of my family.
Thomas Moore:
Family life is full of major and minor crises -- the ups and downs of health, success and failure in career, marriage, and divorce -- and all kinds of characters. It is tied to places and events and histories. With all of these felt details, life etches itself into memory and personality. It's difficult to imagine anything more nourishing to the soul.
Virginia Satir:
Feelings of worth can flourish only in an atmosphere where individual differences are appreciated, mistakes are tolerated, communication is open, and rules are flexible -- the kind of atmosphere that is found in a nurturing family.
William Shakespeare:
It is a wise father that knows his own child.
Agatha Christie:
One is left with the horrible feeling now that war settles nothing; that to win a war is as disastrous as to lose one.
Alex Noble:
If I have been of service, if I have glimpsed more of the nature and essence of ultimate good, if I am inspired to reach wider horizons of thought and action, if I am at peace with myself, it has been a successful day.
Anton Chekov:
We shall find peace. We shall hear angels. We shall see the sky sparkling with diamonds.
Aristotle:
We make war that we may live in peace.
Benjamin Franklin:
There never was a good war or a bad peace.
Benjamin Franklin:
There never was a good war or bad peace.
Carl Sandburg:
Choose
The single clenched fist lifted and ready,
Or the open hand held out and waiting.
Choose:
For we meet by one or the other.
Carl Schurz:
The peace and welfare of this and coming generations of Americans will be secure only as we cling to the watchword of true patriotism: "Our country -- when right to be kept right; when wrong to be put right."
Croesus:
In peace the sons bury their fathers, but in war the fathers bury their sons.
Dorothy Thompson:
They have not wanted Peace at all; they have wanted to be spared war -- as though the absence of war was the same as peace.
Dorothy Thompson:
Peace has to be created, in order to be maintained. It is the product of Faith, Strength, Energy, Will, Sympathy, Justice, Imagination, and the triumph of principle. It will never be achieved by passivity and quietism.
Dorothy Thompson:
Peace is not the absence of conflict but the presence of creative alternatives for responding to conflict -- alternatives to passive or aggressive responses, alternatives to violence.
Dwight D. Eisenhower:
We seek peace, knowing that peace is the climate of freedom.
Ecclesiastes:
For everything there is a season,
And a time for every matter under heaven:
A time to be born, and a time to die;
A time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
A time to kill, and a time to heal;
A time to break down, and a time to build up;
A time to weep, and a time to laugh;
A time to mourn, and a time to dance;
A time to throw away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
A time to embrace, And a time to refrain from embracing;
A time to seek, and a time to lose;
A time to keep, and a time to throw away;
A time to tear, and a time to sew;
A time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
A time to love, and a time to hate,
A time for war, and a time for peace.
Ecclesiastes 3:1-8
George Bernard Shaw:
Peace is not only better than war, but infinitely more arduous.
George Washington:
There is nothing so likely to produce peace as to be well prepared to meet the enemy.
H. H. the Dalai Lama:
I believe that to meet the challenges of our times, human beings will have to develop a greater sense of universal responsibility. Each of us must learn to work not just for oneself, one's own family or nation, but for the benefit of all humankind. Universal responsibility is the key to human survival. It is the best foundation for world peace.
HH the Dalai Lama:
Peace, in the sense of the absence of war, is of little value to someone who is dying of hunger or cold. It will not remove the pain of torture inflicted on a prisoner of conscience. It does not comfort those who have lost their loved ones in floods caused by senseless deforestation in a neighboring country. Peace can only last where human rights are respected, where the people are fed, and where individuals and nations are free.
This entry continued ...
HH the Dalai Lama:
Responsibility does not only lie with the leaders of our countries or with those who have been appointed or elected to do a particular job. It lies with each of us individually. Peace, for example, starts within each one of us. When we have inner peace, we can be at peace with those around us.
This entry continued ...
HH the Dalai Lama:
When we feel love and kindness toward others, it not only makes others feel loved and cared for, but it helps us also to develop inner happiness and peace.
Helen Keller:
I do not want the peace that passeth understanding. I want the understanding which bringeth peace.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow:
I heard the bells on Christmas day
Their old familiar carols play
And mild and sweet the words repeat,
Of peace on earth, good will to men.
I thought how as the day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom
Had roll'd along th' unbroken song
Of peace on earth, good will to men.
And in despair I bow'd my head:
"There is no peace on earth," I said,
"For hate is strong, and mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good will to men."
This entry continued ...
Hermann Goering:
Naturally the common people don't want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor in Germany. That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country. quote verified at snopes.com
Howard Nemerov:
Religion and science both profess peace (and the sincerity of the professors is not being doubted), but each always turns out to have a dominant part in any war that is going or contemplated.
Indira Gandhi:
You can't shake hands with a clenched fist.
James Russell Lowell:
We kind o' thought Christ went agin war an' pillage.
Jimi Hendrix:
When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace.
John F. Kennedy:
It is an unfortunate fact that we can secure peace only by preparing for war.
John F. Kennedy:
Unconditional war can no longer lead to unconditional victory. It can no longer serve to settle disputes. It can no longer be of concern to great powers alone. For a nuclear disaster, spread by winds and waters and fear, could well engulf the great and the small, the rich and the poor, the committed and the uncommitted alike. Mankind must put an end to war or war will put an end to mankind.
John Harricharan:
Peace is not achieved by controlling nations, but mastering our thoughts.
John Lennon:
Imagine all the people living life in peace. You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. I hope someday you'll join us, and the world will live as one.
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu:
While conscience is our friend, all is at peace; however once it is offended, farewell to a tranquil mind.
M. Scott Peck:
There can be no vulnerability without risk; there can be no community without vulnerability; there can be no peace, and ultimately no life, without community.
Maria Montessori:
Establishing lasting peace is the work of education; all politics can do is keep us out of war.
Marian Wright Edelman:
[W]e are not going to deal with the violence in our communities, our homes, and our nation, until we learn to deal with the basic ethic of how we resolve our disputes and to place an emphasis on peace in the way we relate to one another.
Mark Twain:
Peace by persuasion has a pleasant sound, but I think we should not be able to work it. We should have to tame the human race first, and history seems to show that that cannot be done.
Martin Luther King, Jr.:
One day we must come to see that peace is not merely a distant goal we seek, but that it is a means by which we arrive at that goal. We must pursue peaceful ends through peaceful means.
Martin Luther King, Jr.:
True peace is not merely the absence of tension: it is the presence of justice.
Mohandas K. Gandhi:
Non-cooperation is a measure of discipline and sacrifice, and it demands respect for the opposite views.
Mohandas K. Gandhi:
I first learned the concepts of non-violence in my marriage.
Moshe Dayan:
If you want to make peace, you don't talk to your friends. You talk to your enemies.
Omar N. Bradley:
Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing than we know about living. We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon on the Mount.
Oscar Romero:
Peace is not the product of terror or fear.
Peace is not the silence of cemeteries.
Peace is not the silent result of violent repression.
Peace is the generous, tranquil contribution of all to the good of all.
Peace is dynamism. Peace is generosity.
It is right and it is duty.
Peyton Conway March:
There is a wonderful mythical law of nature that the three things we crave most in life -- happiness, freedom, and peace of mind -- are always attained by giving them to someone else.
R. Buckminster Fuller:
Either war is obsolete or men are.
Ralph Waldo Emerson:
A political victory, a rise in rents, the recovery of your sick, or return of your absent friend, or some other quite external event, raises your spirits, and you think good days are preparing for you. Do not believe it. Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles.
from "Self-Reliance"
Ralph Waldo Emerson:
The real and lasting victories are those of peace, and not of war.
Ramona L. Anderson:
People spend a lifetime searching for happiness; looking for peace. They chase idle dreams, addictions, religions, even other people, hoping to fill the emptiness that plagues them. The irony is the only place they ever needed to search was within.
Simone Weil:
A self-respecting nation is ready for anything, including war, except for a renunciation of its option to make war.
Spinoza:
Peace is not the absence of war; it is a virtue; a state of mind; a disposition for benevolence; confidence; and justice.
Thomas Jefferson:
The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government.
Thomas Paine:
If there must be trouble let it be in my day, that my child may have peace.
Thomas a Kempis:
First keep the peace within yourself, then you can also bring peace to others.
Unknown:
Symptoms of Inner Peace
This entry continued ...
Unknown:
The great teachings unanimously emphasize that all the peace, wisdom, and joy in the universe are already within us; we don't have to gain, develop, or attain them. We're like a child standing in a beautiful park with his eyes shut tight. We don't need to imagine trees, flowers, deer, birds, and sky; we merely need to open our eyes and realize what is already here, who we really are -- as soon as we quit pretending we're small or unholy.
William E. Gladstone :
We look forward to the time when the Power of Love will replace the Love of Power. Then will our world know the blessings of peace.
Denise Levertov:
I don't think one can accurately measure the historical effectiveness of a poem; but one does know, of course, that books influence individuals; and individuals, although they are part of large economic and social processes, influence history. Every mass is after all made up of millions of individuals.
Denise Levertov:
A poetry articulating the dreads and horrors of our time is necessary in order to make readers understand what is happening, really understand it, not just know about it but feel it: and should be accompanied by a willingness on the part of those who write it to take additional action towards stopping the great miseries which they record.
John Adams:
I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.
Marge Piercy:
With my poems, I finally won even my mother. The longest wooing of my life.
Braided Lives
Ralph Waldo Emerson:
Conservatism makes no poetry, breathes no prayer, has no invention; it is all memory. Reform has no gratitude, no prudence, no husbandry.
The Conservative
Ralph Waldo Emerson:
The people fancy they hate poetry, and they are all poets and mystics.
Robert Frost:
Poetry is about the grief. Politics is about the grievance.
Robert Penn Warren:
The poem is a little myth of man's capacity of making life meaningful. And in the end, the poem is not a thing we see --i t is, rather, a light by which we may see -- and what we see is life.
Rollo May:
Creativity arises out of the tension between spontaneity and limitations, the latter (like the river banks) forcing the spontaneity into the various forms which are essential to the work of art or poem.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge:
Poetry: the best words in the best order.
Virginia Woolf:
When, however, one reads of a witch being ducked, of a woman possessed by devils, of a wise woman selling herbs, or even a very remarkable man who had a mother, then I think we are on the track of a lost novelist, a suppressed poet. . . indeed, I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.
Wilfred Owen:
All the poet can do today is warn.
That is why true Poets must be truthful.